404 is not an error. It's a headache!!!

[wenwilder]

No matter what site I go to the second I hit a link and get a 404 - page not found - error, I go to a different site. Large companies are just as guilty of this as small companies.

Yahoo has 23 broken links, on average and it's fairly good sized. In this case however I would consider it a small site.

I call it small because Amazon.com is what I would call a large site. Amazon.com averages about 171 broken links.

Granted my estimates are only based on a weeks time. I unfortunately didn't have the time to invest more than a week in this endeavor.

Yahoo and Amazon.com are what I would consider 'professional' sites simply because they are household names. Everyone knows about these sites. (I am not insinuating that everyone in the world knows about these sites, but enough people know to make them popular)

It takes all of 15 seconds to run a 'test' on a site, larger ones like Amazon.com, and find out if there are any broken links. I don't think there's any excuse for links to be broken.

Granted, larger corporations are busy and the website is always being updated, added to, and re-arranged, but still.....take half an hour out of the day and make sure there are not broken links. How hard can that be?

It is generally something simple to fix. A ' or "s" missing or even a < or > it only takes seconds to slip those into the coding and move on to the next one.

I am a perfectionist by nature, I admit it, but this is a truly frustrating problem that can be easily solved. And I will get off my soap box now. :)

But honestly, what do you do when you reach a 404 page?

[rlrouse]

It's especially irritating when I spend 30 minutes or more reading an interesting multi-page article, only to click a dead-end link (for more information) at the end.

[spiderbait]

I agree... it's irritating to the point of being maddening sometimes.

And although it's probably not the direction you were intending to go with this thread, I'll just mention that it's good practice to always include a custom 404 page for any site you build.

That way at least, even if you've goofed and left a link broken, your visitors will still be on your site with a menu on the "file not found" page and they can easily get back on track and stay at the site.

And as a final thought, sometimes when you get peeved at a site for a broken link (such as the last page of an article ;) you start to do a little exploring and experimenting trying to find that last page... and you never know what you might find on some sites when you start venturing into territory their web designers never dreamed anyone would go. Being a bit of a sleuth by nature, I can sometimes find it very enlightening or even entertaining. You wouldn't believe the things I've found stashed away in folders on some web sites <smile>

[grease]

Many webhosts have a 'missing.html' or similar page that you can easily put up on your server. When I made the transition from a static to dynamic site for a e-commerce client, they lost a lot of traffic to the missing page. I then created a 'missing.html' page that was exact replica of the home page. As one would guess, there were less site exits.

Grease

[davebarnes]

I solve the problem on my clients' websites by subscribing to a link checking service.

I have used the service from www.seventwentyfour.com for over 3 years and love it.

Daily/Weekly emails aobut status/errors.
Checks links INBOUND to your site.
Low cost.

,dave

[acornwebworks]

Originally Posted by wenwilder

It takes all of 15 seconds to run a 'test' on a site, larger ones like Amazon.com, and find out if there are any broken links. I don't think there's any excuse for links to be broken.

Granted, larger corporations are busy and the website is always being updated, added to, and re-arranged, but still.....take half an hour out of the day and make sure there are not broken links. How hard can that be?

Uhhh...as part of an old job, I maintained a specialized academic directory for several years. There were over 3,500 links when I started, and the site grew steadily to over 10,000 by the time I left.

I ran a link checker regularly, and know some things for a fact.

One of them is that there was no way on earth my link checker could have scanned that site in 15 seconds. Or that my new and improved one on my infinitely faster computer with much faster internet connection could do it now. So I hesitate to assume that 15 seconds would be sufficient for Amazon or Yahoo, even with all their 'firepower'.

Another thing, since that old site was a directory, like Yahoo, my customized 404 page had nothing to do with any of those broken links on all those other servers.

And, finally, I know from MUCH practice that finding broken links isn't enough. You then have to *DO* something about them. And doing something about them takes far more time than finding them.

So, nope, I won't buy into the 'how hard can that be?' argument because I know from experience just how hard it CAN be :-)

[minstrel]

Originally Posted by davebarnes

I solve the problem on my clients' websites by subscribing to a link checking service.

Or, if you prefer no cost, I use Xenu broken links finder - runs from my computer - I point it to my home page and it follows all the links from there. It can be configured to ignore certain domains or certain types of links, etc.

It is free, fast, and efficent. And, as always, I'm not promoting this because I have any connection at all with the creator - I don't. I just think it's a great little program.

Download it here: Xenu's Link Sleuth

[minstrel]

Originally Posted by acornwebworks

I know from MUCH practice that finding broken links isn't enough. You then have to *DO* something about them. And doing something about them takes far more time than finding them. So, nope, I won't buy into the 'how hard can that be?' argument because I know from experience just how hard it CAN be :-)

You're right - doing something about the broken links is the time consuming part and it does take time on a large site (I have over 100 pages to check and edit).

On the other hand, what do you personally do and/or think when you hit a site with a lot of broken links? My general reaction is apt to be that this is a business that doesn't keep up or doesn't care - either way, there's a pretty good chance I'm going to look elsewhere.

So, whether it takes 15 seconds or 15 hours isn't really the point - it's an essential task, in my view, if you want to present your potential customers with an image of professionalism and competence.

[tertius]

Originally Posted by minstrel

Or, if you prefer no cost, I use Xenu broken links finder - runs from my computer - I point it to my home page and it follows all the links from there. It can be configured to ignore certain domains or certain types of links, etc.

It is free, fast, and efficent. And, as always, I'm not promoting this because I have any connection at all with the creator - I don't. I just think it's a great little program.

Download it here: Xenu's Link Sleuth

David,

Great resource and timesaving tool--thanks for bringing it to our attention!

-Tertius

[minstrel]

Originally Posted by tertius

Great resource and timesaving tool--thanks for bringing it to our attention!

It is a pretty neat little utility, isn't it? Once it's done its thing, I have it save the report as HTML, then load that page into FrontPage. Then I can go line by line down the broken links report, loading and fixing the pages in question and then deleting the bad link from Xenu's report as I fix it. That way, if it takes me more than one session, my "error" report is always up-to-date so I can start off where I left off.

alienzhavelanded would probably like the Xenu logo...

[vilesilencer]

Originally Posted by wenwilder

No matter what site I go to the second I hit a link and get a 404 - page not found - error, I go to a different site. Large companies are just as guilty of this as small companies.

Yup. If it's the standard 404, I definitely split second choose another site. Never refresh. They've lost me.

Originally Posted by spiderbait

And although it's probably not the direction you were intending to go with this thread, I'll just mention that it's good practice to always include a custom 404 page for any site you build.

Definitely agree. I bang those on my sites. The way I see it is if a company goes to the trouble of creating a custom 404 error page, to redirect their visitors to the home page, or provide their site map etc for dead/broken links, they care enough about those visitors to want them to stay. So i stay :)

If a company doesn't have a custom 404 error page, I figure they are so big or so busy they won't care if they lose my business. So they lose it :)[/quote]